To experience snow and learn German, the young Vietnamese woman Trúc Lâm moves to a little town in the Erz Mountains. During a guided tour of a mine, she leaves her group and reaches the other side of the mountain through a secondary shaft. The world there is similar to the one she left – only all the people are different. She meets Duc, who is also from Vietnam and whose parents have an Asian snack bar. And she meets a mysterious spirit who offers to make a deal with her to enable her return to her old world.

Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working under aliases, due to immigration status and to not conflict with their "signing on" for unemployment benefits. Some coworkers help Stevie secure housing, squatting in a council estate. Then Stevie meets Susan, from Ireland, who's struggling to be a professional singer.

Two men want to escape from East Germany (under Communist rule) but they will only go if they can take their families with them. Based on a true story.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a communist family discovers a bunker full of money soon to be worthless. With the help of their neighbors, they embark on a race against time to enter the capitalist world in style.

When a Polish sailor jumps ship in Britain, a couple of local intelligence operatives keep him under surveillance. Soon, he’s recruited to infiltrate a missile installation outside of East Berlin and bring back photos of the new rockets.

Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater's production of Romeo and Juliet alongside his estranged teenage daughter, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life.

Felix from West-Berlin falls in love with Thomas in East-Berlin. At first they keep their relationship going by regular visits from Felix, but the curfew forces him to return every evening. When the East-German authorities become suspicious, Thomas decides to try and flee to the West.

A young soldier enters Germany with Soviet troops at the end of WWII, feeling like a stranger in his homeland. As he meets Germans, he grapples with his ambivalence, realizing he is both a victor and one of the vanquished. His inquisitive nature leads him to confront the atrocities and lies he encounters along the way.

The school authorities want to read success stories in director Joachim Faber's reports. But they cannot simply be produced on an assembly line. Pupils, for example, use the wrong tone. The matter draws circles until the superiors finally talk about refusal to work. Director Faber is caught between the efforts to resolve the conflict with pedagogical means and the pressure from above.

An unemployed construction worker heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water when his car overheats. The farm is being worked by a group of East European Catholic nuns, headed by the strict mother superior, who believes the man has been sent by God to build a much needed church in the desert.

College freshman Sydney White arrives at Southern Atlantic University, determined to pledge her late mother's sorority. Unfortunately, she finds that the sisterhood has changed since her parent's day. Banished to a condemned house, Sydney joins forces with seven outcasts to take over the student government and win equal rights for nerd and noted alike.